1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is in the field of trailer type carriers for small boats such as canoes and kayaks.
2. Description of Related Art
People who kayak usually need a convenient way to secure one or more kayaks to a transport vehicle to get the kayaks to water. One well-known way is with a roof-mounted rack, usually temporarily attached to the vehicle roof, capable of carrying one to three kayaks. Kayak roof racks generally seem to be designed to mount kayaks right side up or at a sideways angle.
While canoe roof racks are also known, they typically hold the canoes upside down, probably since canoes' large open hulls are more difficult to cover and therefore more likely to collect water and cause turbulence while driving, but are easily secured when flipped over onto their parallel upper edges. The more slender, flexible nature of kayak hulls with their sloped upper surfaces and upturned bow and stern ends do not naturally lend themselves to an inverted mount.
A problem with vehicle roof racks is the difficulty in loading and unloading relatively heavy kayaks and canoes at rooftop height, especially for smaller people. Canoes tend to be heavier than kayaks, and another popular way to carry canoes is accordingly with a low trailer-mounted rack. As with roof-type canoe racks, the canoes generally seem to be carried upside down. These trailer racks are typically meant to carry multiple canoes, are often used by commercial canoe liveries and the like, and tend to be large, cumbersome metal structures permanently mounted or integrally built into a wheeled trailer structure. One common type of trailered canoe carrier uses T-shaped racks, with the canoes placed upside-down on the crossbars of paired “T” racks and tied or strapped or clamped in place. An example of this type of rack is U.S. Pat. No. 3,610,431 to Rodden, in which the inverted canoes are held in place at their edges and keels by sliding arms and clamping members. Trailer type racks are believed to be more common for canoes than for kayaks, partly due to the differences in hulls described above, although the inventors have known kayakers to use homemade, purpose-built trailers with canoe type crossbar racks on which kayaks ride right side up on padded hull supports, held in place by straps. Kayakers have also been known to fasten rooftop kayak carriers onto canoe type trailer racks in makeshift fashion to carry the kayaks sideways, but this tends to be awkward and less stable.
A disadvantage of using canoe-type rack trailers for kayaks is the need to secure the upright kayak hulls on the crossbar supports with straps, which the Rodden '431 patent describes as a characteristically unstable way to secure even the tiedown-friendly hulls of inverted canoes, subject to shifting and damage. Yet Rodden's clamping-member modified canoe crossbars would not in our opinion be suitable or desirable for carrying the relatively delicate hulls of kayaks.
While roof-type kayak racks are generally out of the way when not in use, whether left on the roof of the car or removed for storage, trailers for canoes and kayaks require a lot of storage space. Since canoe and kayak trailers in our experience are dedicated-use trailers, this means that they tend to sit around unused most of the time, taking up space.